Holi is one of my favourite and I really love all aspects of it - colours, the burning of the bonfire the day before Holi (Holika Dahan), Bhang and the food! I had not had a good Holi celebration after I moved to Bangalore (2005).
However, I had a GREAT Holi yesterday when I joined thousands of others from Bay Area in the Asha Stanford's Holi celebration. I had tons of fun coloring my wife, friends and random folks, having yummy food and enjoying a beautiful day in the sun.
We had planned to take the train to one of our friend's (N) place and then accompany him and his wife to the Holi celebrations. The day started at 8 AM and we had a hiccup when we missed our train to get to our friend's place. We had to wait another hour to catch the next train. However, things started looking better after this incident. We ran into another acquintance Of ours on the train station and they got on the same train as us. We passed them a few tips about which places to visit in San Francisco (they were on their way to SF for some tourism).
We got down at our station and N. came down to pick us up. We went to his house, chit-chatted for a while and then started off for the venue to Stanford.
I was expecting a jolly good time and that is what I got 
. The
holi was in full swing when we got there. One of the playgrounds had
been cordoned off for the holi festivities. We took our tickets and
jumped into the festivities. There were lots of colors and lots of
people. After we had colored each other, we started putting colors on
random people. After 30 minutes with colors, it was difficult to
recognize each other. There were some dance performances by some
Stanford groups. And then the dancing started. And then we put color
on more random people. The festivities ended around 3 PM. We had
some food and then we came back home. Back home, we had to scrub
ourself for around 15 minutes to clean out the colors, but it was a
minor hassle.
Overall, I had a very good time and I hope to go back to the Holi celebrations again next year.
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